Recently, there has been a lot of buzz in the operations of Australian contents and even it raised to the fact that Google and the Australian government would need to fix a meeting to sort things out and come to a mutual understanding. Now, there has been another news on the same wherein it is reported that Google has threatened regarding the removal of its search engine from Australia over the attempt of the country so as to share royalties with the news publishers. Australia is introducing a first law to make Google, Facebook and different other tech companies pat the media outlets to telecast their news contents. However, the US firms fought back to this statement thereby warning the law that they would be withdrawing some of their services. The Australian PM Scott Morrison had said that the lawmakers would not yield to any kind of “threats.”
Australia being far from the largest market of Google
Australia is far from the largest market of Google and the news code proposed seems to be a global test case for the governments to seek towards the regularisation of big tech companies. Australia’s code is going to tie both Google and Facebook, thereby mediating a negotiation with the publishers over the news contents, provided that no agreement would be achieved. Mel Silva, the managing director of Google Australia told the Senate hearing it on Friday that the laws were ‘unworkable.’ She said, “If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia.”
The lawmakers had challenged it accusing the Google of ‘blackmail’ and this, bullying Australia for raising this reform. The Senator Rex Patrick said, “It’s going to go worldwide. Are you going to pull out of every market, are you? Is this about stopping the precedence?” Silva replied to it saying, “an untenable risk for our Australian operations”. On the contrary, Mr Morrison had said, “Let me be clear: Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That’s done in our parliament.”
What makes Australia pushing the law?
Google is undoubtedly one of the most dominant search engines in Australia and had been described by the government as a near-essential utility with a less of market competition. Besides, the government has also argued that as the tech companies are gaining customers from people who seem to look forward to read news, the tech giants would need to pay a fair amount to the newsrooms.
